….There was a time, and it was much less than a century ago, when any man of sound sense and fair education could understand all of the concepts commonly employed in the physical sciences, and even most of those used in the speculative sciences. In medicine, for example, there was nothing beyond the comprehension of the average intelligent layman. But of late that has ceased to be true, to the great damage of the popular respect for knowledge. Only too often, when a physician of today tries to explain to his patient what is the matter with him, be finds it impossible to get the explanation into terms within the patient's understanding. The latter, if he is intelligent enough, will face the fact of his lack of training without rancor, and content himself with whatever parts of the exposition he can grasp. But that sort of intelligence, unluckily, is rather rare in the world; it is confined, indeed, to men of the sort who are said to have the scientific mind, i.e., a very small minority of men. The average man, finding himself getting beyond his depth, instantly concludes that what lies beyond is simply nonsense.
It is this fact which accounts for the great current prosperity of such quackeries as osteopathy, chiropractic and Christian Science. The agents of such quackeries gain their converts by the simple process of reducing the inordinately complex to the absurdly simple. Unless a man is already equipped with a considerable knowledge of chemistry, bacteriology and physiology, no one can ever hope to make him understand what is meant by the term anaphylaxis, but any man, if only be be idiot enough, can grasp the whole theory of chiropractic in twenty minutes. The fact that such imbeciles prosper increasingly in the world, and gain adherents in constantly superior circles–that is, among persons of more and more apparent education and culture–is no more than proof that the physical sciences are becoming increasingly recondite and difficult, and that the relative numbers of persons congenitally incapable of comprehending them is growing year by year.
H.L. Mencken
The Foundations of Quackery
Baltimore Evening Sun, June 4, 1923
